d thousand dollars. Their method of making dials, tablets and
brass doors was a saving of more than ten thousand dollars per year over
any other company doing the same amount of business; and I know that the
present company would not give up the customers of the Jerome
Manufacturing Company for ten thousand dollars per year: they could not
afford to do it. The workmen who came with me from Bristol, were an
uncommonly energetic and ingenious set of men. Many years they had large
and profitable jobs in the different branches, which encouraged them to
invent and get up improvements for doing the work fast, and in a great
many things they far surpass the workmen in similar establishments--all
of which have resulted to the benefit of the present manufacturing
company of New Haven.

In the year 1850, I was induced by a proposition from the Benedict &
Burnham Co., of Waterbury, to enter into a joint-stock company at my
place in New Haven, under the name of the Jerome Manufacturing Co. They
were to put in thirty-five thousand dollars, and I was to furnish the
same amount of capital. We did so, and went on very prosperously for a
year or two, making a great many clocks, and selling about one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars worth per year in England, at a profit of
twenty thousand dollars. They were very thorough in looking into the
affairs of the company, which was all right of course, but did not suit
all of the interested parties. My son was Secretary and financial
manager of the company. He seemed to have a desire to keep things to
himself a little too much, which also did not suit many of the
interested parties. My son told me he thought we had better buy the
company out, and said that we could do so without difficulty, and he
thought it would be a great advantage to us. Some were willing to sell,
and others were not. Mr. Burnham made an offer what he would sell for,
which the secretary accepted, others of the stock-holders made similar
propositions and the bargain closed, we paying them the capital they had
advanced and twenty-one per cent. profits, and buying, in the mean time,
seventy-five thousand dollars worth of brass--the profits on which were
not less than twenty thousand dollars, which they had the cash for in
the course of the year. About this time a man by the name of Lyman
Squires bought stock in the company, and took a great interest in the
business. A wealthy brother of his bought, I think, ten thousand dolla